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Tag Archives: Valladolid


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Irish Regiments Fight at the Battle of Saragossa

Irish regiments in service of Spain fight at the Battle of Saragossa, also known as the Battle of Zaragoza, on August 20, 1710, during the War of the Spanish Succession.

A Spanish Bourbon army loyal to Philip V of Spain and commanded by Alexandre Maître, Marquis de Bay, is defeated by a Grand Alliance force under Guido Starhemberg. Despite this victory, which allows Philip’s rival Archduke Charles to enter the Spanish capital of Madrid, the allies are unable to consolidate their gains. Forced to retreat, they suffer successive defeats at Brihuega in November and Villaviciosa in December, which effectively end their chances of installing Archduke Charles on the Spanish throne.

The 1710 Spanish campaign opens on May 15 when the Spanish Bourbon army commanded by Philip V in person and Francisco Castillo Fajardo, Marquis of Villadarias, advance on the town of Balaguer. Guido Starhemberg, commander of the Allied forces in Catalonia, halts this attempt by preventing the Spanish from fording the Segre River, a success in which the officers of the British contingent have a leading role.

Having received reinforcements, in June Philip makes another attempt upon Balaguer with 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry but is defeated at Almenar on July 27. The allied troops take up a strong defensive position and repel the Spanish attacks until the British commander, James Stanhope, leading their vanguard, breaks the Spanish lines. Philip is forced to withdraw to Zaragoza, capital of Aragon, while Villadarias is replaced by the French general Alexandre Maître, Marquis de Bay.

On August 9, the Spanish army reaches Zaragoza and de Bay positions his troops with the river Ebro on his left and the Torrero heights to the right. On August 15, an Allied cavalry attack is repulsed, followed by five days of minor skirmishes before the Allies cross the Ebro in force on August 19 and are allowed to deploy during the night.

The two forces are roughly equal in strength, the allies having thirty-seven battalions of infantry and forty-three squadrons opposed to the Spanish-Bourbon army of thirty-eight battalions and fifty-four squadrons. The Allied left, composed of Catalonian and Dutch troops, is led by Pedro Manuel de Ataíde, 5th Count of Atalaia, the right by Stanhope, made up of British, Portuguese and Austrian cavalry, with Starhemberg in charge of the centre, mainly German, Austrian and Spanish infantry.

On August 20 at 8:00 a.m., an artillery-duel starts which lasts four hours before Stanhope charges the Bourbon-Spanish left. At first the Spanish and Walloon troops of the Bourbon army seem to gain the advantage, having defeated a body of eight Portuguese squadrons, which they chased from the field. This opens a gap in the Bourbon lines, which opens a gap for Stanhope who scatters the disorganized Spanish soldiers, while at the centre and the right their attacks are repulsed.

The battle follows the same pattern as at Almenar, with the allies repulsing fierce Bourbon cavalry charges before counter-attacked with their infantry and pushing the Spanish back. In less than three hours, the Allies army wins a comprehensive victory, capturing the Bourbon artillery along with 73 standards. Between 5,000 and 6,000 Spanish soldiers are killed or wounded, and another 7,000 captured, with Allied losses estimated as 1,500 men dead or wounded.

Archduke Charles enters Zaragoza the next day. The defeat of the army of Philip V of Spain is severe, the way to Madrid is open. Philip V abandons Madrid on September 9 and goes to Valladolid. Archduke Charles enters a very hostile and almost empty Madrid on September 28. Charles comments, “This city is a desert!” In the winter of 1710, Archduke Charles and the allied troops have to abandon Madrid, due to the great opposition of the people of Madrid and the dangerous strategic situation. After this, the British army suffers a defeat at the Battle of Brihuega, and the rest of the allied army is defeated at the Battle of Villaviciosa.


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Death of Flaithrí Ó Maolchonaire, Archbishop of Tuam

Flaithrí Ó Maolchonaire, Irish Franciscan and theologian, founder of St. Anthony’s College, Leuven, and Archbishop of Tuam, dies in Madrid, Spain on November 18, 1629.

Ó Maolchonaire is born in the townland of Figh, civil parish of Tibohine, barony of Frenchpark, County Roscommon. His father and mother are Fíthil and Onóra Ó Maolchonaire. Two other sons survive to adulthood, Maoilechlainn and Firbisigh. They belong to a well-known family of historians and poets. He is brought up in the family profession.

Ó Maolchonaire studies for the priesthood at Salamanca, entering the Irish college founded in 1592. He first studies the liberal arts and philosophy. In 1593 he translates into Irish a short Castilian catechism by Jerónimo de Ripalda SJ. The original is a simple catechetical work written in Aristotelian master-pupil dialogue. According to Mícheál Mac Craith, Ó Maolchonaire’s translation pointedly refers to the Irish as Eirinnach rather than Gaedheal.

After five years at the Salamanca Irish college, Ó Maolchonaire leaves to join the Franciscan province of Santiago. Aodh Mac Cathmhaoil is among his classmates in the Salamanca Franciscan friary. They and nine of their peers in the Santiago province are later raised to the episcopacy, an unprecedented development in the history of the order.

At the height of the Nine Years’ War, Ó Maolchonaire sails to Ireland where he serves as a confessor and preacher to troops under the command of Hugh O’Neill and Hugh Roe O’Donnell. In 1601, they request a bishopric for Ó Maolchonaire “in recognition of his diligence, commending his sound judgment on Irish affairs.” After the disaster of Kinsale in 1601, he accompanies O’Donnell to Spain as his confessor and adviser, hoping to see a renewal of Spanish military intervention in Ireland.

In 1602, Ó Maolchonaire attempts to get approval for O’Donnell to meet Philip III in person, but they are kept at arm’s length by the Spanish court. During this time, they also drafted an official complaint against the Jesuit superiors of the Irish college at Salamanca over presumed discrimination in favour of Old English students at the expense of students from Connacht and Ulster.

While waiting for a response to his repeated calls for military support in Ireland, O’Donnell becomes seriously ill and dies at Simancas, being assisted on his deathbed by Ó Maolconaire. In keeping with his patronage of the order of friars minor in Donegal, O’Donnell is buried in the Franciscan habit. Ó Maolchonaire accompanies the remains to their last resting place in the Franciscan church at Valladolid. He continues to press for military support after O’Donnell’s death. He participates in an abandoned maritime expedition which reaches Achill Sound in 1603 but never lands in Ireland. He subsequently assists the Spanish councils of state and war to stem the flow of Irish military migrants and their dependents in Spain.

As adviser to Puñonrostro, the king’s appointee as protector of Irish exiles in Spain, Ó Maolchonaire helps to secure funds for widows, orphans and clerics. Trained as a chronicler and genealogist, he sponsors the entry of Irish soldiers into Spanish military orders and successfully calls for the promotion of Henry O’Neill, second eldest son of the earl of Tyrone, as colonel of Irish infantry units in Flanders, the O’Neill tercio in 1604.

In 1606, the Franciscan general chapter is held in Toledo where Ó Maolchonaire is selected as minister-provincial of the Irish friars minor. The most notable act of his tenure as provincial is the founding of a new Irish Franciscan college at Leuven in the Habsburg Netherlands. A year before his appointment, he begins his efforts in earnest with an appeal to the Spanish king. The loss of five Franciscan houses during the Nine Years’ War makes a new foundation essential. In response, Philip III instructs Albert VII, Archduke of Austria, to provide a perpetual grant for a new college in the university town of Leuven. Ó Maolchonaire’s part in founding the college clearly influences the Catholic pastoral mission to Ireland during the seventeenth century. The first and most active Irish printing press on the continent is long in operation at Leuven.

After Hugh O’Neill and Rory O’Donnell leave Ireland in 1607, Ó Maolconaire accompanies them from Douai to Rome as interpreter and advisor. Christopher St. Laurence, baron of Howth, implicates him in a plot to seize Dublin Castle and raises a new rebellion just before the Flight of the Earls. In recognition of his losses, Philip III and Paul V offer O’Neill the concession of Ó Maolchonaire’s promotion to the archbishopric of Tuam. On Sunday, May 3, 1609, he is consecrated archbishop by Cardinal Maffeo Barberini in the centre of Rome at the Chiesa Santo Spirito in Sassia. He remains in Rome until his appointment as archbishop of Tuam before returning to Madrid on behalf of Hugh O’Neill.

In response to the 1613–15 Parliament of Ireland, Ó Maolchonaire writes from Valladolid a remonstrance to the Catholic members of the parliament, rebuking them for assenting to the bill of attainder that confiscated the estates of O’Neill, O’Donnell and their adherents. As Archbishop of Tuam, he never takes possession of his episcopal see, governing through vicars general. He continues to live in Madrid and Leuven, as is the case with many Irish clergy at the time. Like his fellow-Franciscan, Luke Wadding, and Peter Lombard, Archbishop of Armagh, he serves as a key intermediary and his influence in Irish matters is considerable. In 1626, a year after Charles I declared war on Spain, he makes the case for an invasion of Ireland under the joint leadership of the earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell.

Ó Maolconaire dies at the Franciscan friary of San Francisco el Grande in Madrid on November 18, 1629. In 1654, two Irish friars bring his remains back to St. Anthony’s College in Leuven where he is buried near the high altar in the collegiate chapel.


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Death of Red Hugh O’Donnell

Hugh Roe O’Donnell (Aodh Rua ÓDomhnaill), sixteenth century Irish nobleman also known as Red Hugh O’Donnell, dies at Simancas Castle in Valladolid, Spain, on September 10, 1602. Evidence suggests he might have been poisoned by an English spy.

O’Donnell is born on October 30, 1572, in Lifford (which is in present-day County Donegal) and is the son of Hugh McManus O’Donnell, the Gaelic Lord of Tyrconnell, a territory which takes in most of the present-day county of Donegal except for the Inishowen peninsula. His mother, Aodh MacManus’ second wife, is the formidable and extremely well-connected Scottish lady, Fionnuala Nic Dhomhnaill, known to history as the Iníon Dubh or The Dark Daughter. A daughter of James Mac Donald she had been raised at the Scottish court.

In 1587, at the age of fifteen, O’Donnell marries Rose O’Neill, the daughter of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, a nephew of Turlough Lynagh O’Neill who is recognised by the Irish as The O’Neill. He is, therefore, a bridge between two traditional enemies, the O’Donnell’s and the O’Neills.

The English Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir John Perrot, recognises the importance of the young O’Donnell prince and decides to secure him as a hostage thus giving him power over the O’Donnell clan and preventing them from forming a treaty with the O’Neills. In 1587, when he is sixteen, O’Donnell and two friends, a MacSweeney and an O’Gallagher, are persuaded to board a ship at Rathmullan which has been disguised as a Spanish wine barque. Once onboard they are carried off to Dublin Castle as prisoners. The O’Donnell’s offer to pay a large ransom and the Iníon Dubh also gives up 25 Spaniards rescued from the Armada. The English agree to this but as soon as the Spaniards are handed over, they are beheaded. The agreement is not kept.

Perrot has his hostage but a most reluctant one. The young man continuously seeks ways to escape. His first opportunity comes at Christmas in 1590 when a rope is smuggled in to the prince. He escapes and flees into the Wicklow Mountains. He seeks shelter with Phelim O’Toole who has him returned to the English as he fears the anger of the infamous Perrot.

A year later, at Christmas in 1591, O’Donnell makes his second attempt at escape, this time by crawling through the Dublin Castle sewers. With him are Henry and Art O’Neill, two sons of Shane O’Neill (Shane the Proud). This time the escapees make their way to the Glenmalure stronghold of Fiach McHugh O’Byrne. Unfortunately, the winter is very severe and Art O’ Neill dies from exposure just as the O’Byrne rescue party finds them. Both Red Hugh and Henry O’Neill suffer severe frostbite but are safely returned to Ulster.

While O’Donnell is held prisoner by the English, his father becomes senile. In 1592, when O’Donnell is sufficiently recovered, he is inaugurated as the O’Donnell and England, for her treachery, has an avowed and implacable enemy.

O’Donnell aids the Maguires of Fermanagh against the English and when his father-in-law, Hugh O’Neill, initiates the Nine Years’ War by leading his clan against the English at the Battle of Clontibret (1595) and Battle of the Yellow Ford (1598), O’Donnell is at his side.

In 1595 O’Donnell ambushes an English force in the Curlew Mountains, killing 500 of them including their commander. However, the tide is turning against the Irish now. England is flooding the country with armies and many of the leading Gaelic families are beginning to make deals with them.

In 1601 the Spanish land in Kinsale and the English besiege them. O’Neill and O’Donnell march south from Ulster and Ballymote Castle in Sligo in an attempt to break the siege. This turns into a debacle causing the Irish to scatter and the Spanish to surrender. O’Neill marches back north and O’Donnell is sent to Spain to ask for more troops from Phillip III. In Spain, he is treated like a royal. He petitions aid from the King who gives him a promise of another Spanish force.

As a year passes and O’Donnell does not receive any news from Philip III of Spain, he leaves again for Valladolid, but he dies on September 10, 1602, while en route. He is attended on his deathbed by Archbishop of Tuam Fláithrí Ó Maolchonaire and two friars from Donegal named Father Muiris mac Donnchadh Ulltach Ó Duinnshléibhe and Father Muiris mac Seaán Ulltach Ó Duinnshléibhe. The Anglo-Irish double-agent, James “Spanish” Blake, is alleged to have poisoned O’Donnell.

It is, however, unlikely that O’Donnell is poisoned. A more probable cause of death is the tapeworm that Simancas documents of the time state to be the cause of his demise. His Last Will and Testament, written in his dying moments with his loyal retinue, is an extremely evocative and moving document. One original is preserved in Simancas and the other in the Chancellery archive in Valladolid.

O’Donnell is buried in the chapter of the Franciscan monastery in Valladolid. Though the building is demolished in 1837, the exact location of the tomb may have been discovered following a Spanish archaeological dig in May 2020.

O’Donnell is succeeded as chieftain of his clan and prince of Tyrconnell by his brother Rory.

(Pictured: Statue of Gaelic Chieftain Red Hugh O’Donnell in County Donegal)